


Snapshots: Five Courting Maneuvers + 1 Sex Ritual

by Guede



Series: Experiments in Light and Dark [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe, BAMF Stiles, Bondage, Dom/sub Undertones, Incest, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Multi, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Pack Dynamics, Peter Should Have Been A Drama Nerd, Polyamory, Sex Magic, Stilinski Family Feels, Werewolf Courting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 17:40:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4634301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles isn’t oblivious or slow, but Derek and Peter have the most sideways approach to courting ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stiles' Dad

**Author's Note:**

> Post- _Camera Obscura_ , timeline interweaves with _Five Shoes Lydia Lost + 1 Someone Bought For Her_. This isn't straight courtship fic; this is intended to wrap up the remaining loose ends from _Camera Obscura_.

“I’ve done some things,” Stiles’ father finally says.

Stiles fidgets with his hands. The bridge railing he’s sitting on rattles against his feet, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees his father start and lift a hand, as if to steady him. Then put it back down on the rail, firmly, with a look on his face like someone’s dropped another twenty tons on his back. Having his father back is—uneasy, maybe is the best word. He’s glad about it, but being glad took him on his blind side and he hates that. And, well, it’s his _father_.

He has no idea what that means.

“Yeah,” he says, because it’s sunny and the birds are chirping and no werewolves are eavesdropping, and nobody’s trying to kill him. And he’s not trying to kill anybody. And fuck you, internalized Scott-voice, he knows exactly how well he copes. “Yeah, well, not judging. Or are we? Because I gotta say—”

“That’s not what I—fuck.” Stiles’ father puts both hands on the rail and leans hard on it, grunting. He’s…less old than Stiles had expected. Sort of. Childhood memories are weird, everything so much bigger and brighter and simpler, like block drawings, and he remembers a giant man with yellow hair and a dark brown jacket. 

His father is still blond but it’s a dusty, pale blond, like the Mojave in greylight, and he’s got as much bulk as Chris Argent but is gaunter in the face and hands. Parched-looking, like he dried out under the sun and never really rehydrated. 

And he curses now, heartfelt, unapologetic, raw feeling breaking through the constant drag of fatigue that surrounds him. “Fuck. Stiles. Fuck.” He kneads the rail a little longer, then steps back and runs his hand across the side of his face. “I’m shit at this, okay? I stopped being your father when I let you—when I didn’t—when I wasn’t there. I know I can’t turn back time. I know—I know I don’t _know_ you now. But I just…I would like to get to know you.”

Stiles kicks his feet against the bridge. It’s not that far a drop, maybe ten, eleven feet, but the water’s barely a trickle over some clunky rocks. He’d probably twist his ankle at the very least. Lydia would yell, Scott would make mournful eyes at him, and God knows what the Hales would do. It’d been hard enough to get them to fuck off for this little talk in the first place, and half of it had been Stiles hadn’t wanted to have it. But can’t have your dad wandering around forever, stumbling into you with your hands elbow-deep in a corpse, can he. _Fuck_ is right.

“I’m not going to say I agree with what you’re doing. I know I don’t have that right,” his father says heavily.

“According to you, you don’t have a lot of things,” Stiles says. He watches his father wince and it’s weird, it feels like he’s got a space where that should hurt and he has this phantom sense like maybe he remembers how that feels, but he doesn’t. And it’s weird that that feels _weird_ to him. “Look—I…don’t know either, okay?”

For a second he’s afraid his father is going to plow on. But the man just drops it. Gives him a nod and settles back, slow and jerky, like he’s got to relax one joint at a time.

“I don’t want you to leave yet,” Stiles adds. He looks at the rocks under them again, then sighs. “Yeah. I don’t. So…I guess we can do lunches, and try to…do this. But you know, just so there’s no shitty surprises, we kind of do need to know whatever your deal was. Is. You can tell Lydia if that’s easier, but I need to know and we need to deal with it.”

“I already…” His father blinks and shrugs. “I freelance as a private investigator, but I closed all my open cases when I came down and haven’t picked up any since. There’s a witch I tracked down for human trafficking, but I thought the selkie pod I was working for handled her.”

Stiles hums thoughtfully. “Handled like dead-handled?”

“Got that impression,” his father says. He’s easy about it, business-like. Then he grimaces. “Do you remember that little talk we had about my badge?”

Yeah. Not that Stiles wants to, because even now it stings, but he nods.

“I turned that in a long time ago.” His father leans against the rail. His sleeves ride up, and then he pushes one further back, scratching at a scar. His jacket—plain windbreaker, slightly discolored at the elbows—stretches over the gun holstered under his arm, the knife strapped to his wrist.

It says something about their lives that Stiles feels better seeing that, and that his dad is okay letting him see it. There’d been a long talk about his dad’s service pistol, too, and what he mostly remembers about it is how his dad’s face had scrunched up, all tight and distorted, so he’d been more worried about whether his dad was sick than listening. Couldn’t have both parents sick, one was bad enough.

Stiles makes a face. His dad glances at him but lets him be.

“Already?” Stiles eventually says.

His dad’s eyebrows rise. “Peter…so when he found me, he was pretending to be a new client,” he says slowly. “Very picky. Wanted references and everything. He said his pack was in a delicate place, politically, and needed to be sure I wouldn’t get them into more trouble. He was very convincing.”

“Deep down I’m pretty sure Peter really wanted to be a drama nerd in school, instead of basketball captain,” Stiles mutters. He’s grinning anyway, picturing it. He should probably rein that in, can’t have Peter bringing home strays every time they’re on the outs (shit, do they have any other relatives?), but this time it’ll maybe work out. 

“Yeah, seems like.” His dad looks a little funny. Considers something carefully, pursing his lips. “He also went on at some length about how to kill werewolves and keep them dead. It actually took me a while to realize _he_ was one. Stiles, when I say I don’t have the right to judge you, I mean it, but…is he all right?”

“I am…not sure how you mean that question,” Stiles says. Actually, he is sure, because his father is an easy man to read, but it doesn’t make sense to be worrying over whether Peter is depressed. Peter actually does _get_ depressed, but absolutely not around outsiders, let alone someone he’s trying to lure in. “He was good this morning, anyway.”

His dad nods. Still looks a bit constipated. “Your…other…Derek. He did the same thing a few days ago. This isn’t about their—Laura, is it? I mean, I heard a little about their family history, but they don’t seem that…”

“They’re not. They’re okay with that.” Stiles frowns. The Hales fight about a lot of things, most of which Stiles doesn’t yet have the backstory for, but none of them have ever shown any problem with resurrection. On the contrary, Peter has a whole external hard drive devoted to resurrection methods, and he gets kind of adorably gleeful over finding a new one. Stiles is pretty sure that in the case Peter ever does bite it, they’ll find detailed instructions on how to reboot him, probably without even resorting to blood magic (because man, they hate it when he bleeds unconscious). “Are you sure they weren’t just feeding you some bullshit? That’s not usually Derek’s style, but Peter does that all the time. He once convinced someone that werewolves are fatally allergic to Green Goddess dressing.”

“No, it tallied up with a couple things I’d heard of, and Chris Argent confirmed the rest,” his dad says, also frowning. He hesitates. “Stiles, about Chris…”

“Can we save that for next time?” Stiles says. “I mean, unless he was also giving you tips on how to kill him, in which case, maybe I should check the water supply.”

“Ah, no. He wasn’t.” His father swallows hard on whatever else he’d been about to say. It’s not easy for him, but he’s trying. He shuffles uncomfortably on the bridge, then glances back at Stiles. “Are you hungry?”

“Are you buying?” Stiles says. When his father snorts and nods, Stiles feels an odd wave of relief. Maybe it won’t be so bad, if his dad can already pick up on his fries jonesing. “Then totally.”


	2. Jackson

Lydia’s a much, much better person to discuss weird Hale behavior with, what with not having a macho persona to maintain, but Lydia is off bonding with Laura in Monterey. And Scott is laid out after getting tackled by a rogue omega right after his last-ever high-school final exam; it wasn’t the fight so much as Scott, without giving Stiles a heads-up, had decided to see just how many cans of Red Bull it took to keep a werewolf up and had not handled the crash well. When he woke up, he and Stiles were going to have a talk about controlled testing environments, and that would hopefully keep him from flipping out over Deucalion and Allison turning the omega into a paper-thin smear.

So yeah. Stiles is stuck with Jackson.

“Weirder than they usually are?” Jackson mumbles. He noses sleepily at Stiles’ belly, then jerks up and glares when Stiles flicks his ear. “Hey, what the hell?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Trying to have intelligent conversation here, Jackson, and justify your SAT verbal score. Why would you tell somebody the best way to kill you for good?”

“Because I’m a lunatic who communicates best through murder?” Jackson snaps. He glowers for a couple more seconds, then gives up on getting Stiles to care and twists around to dig at the blankets. “That’s not even the weirdest thing they’ve done, you know.”

Jackson turns up his phone, flips it to the bedside table. Finds the lubricant tube and spends a second putting the cap on right—he’s kind of an OCD neat freak—and then finally turns up the TV remote. He presses ‘play’ and the movie they’d paused forty-something minutes ago flickers back to life.

“Like?” Stiles prompts.

“Dunno.” Jackson drops the remote on the side table and then crawls up to lie next to Stiles. He stares at the TV through half an asskicking, then sighs and throws his arm over his eyes. “Are you going to keep looking at me like that?”

“Dunno,” Stiles says. He pushes himself up the headboard, then reaches over and hooks his finger through the ring at the back of Jackson’s collar.

Jackson shivers, but mulishly keeps watching the movie. A second tug, and he’s biting back a whimper. Stiles doesn’t tug a third time because Jackson is straddling him and licking out his mouth like Stiles is going to forget all about this stupid conversation when Jackson finds his tonsils.

He gives it a minute or so, wrapping his hand around the back of Jackson’s neck, skittering his nails along the hairline like Jackson likes, and then he pries Jackson off. There’s an erection already sliding along Stiles’ thigh, dragging a damp streak of precum after it, and Jackson is panting into Stiles’ neck, his hands clenched into fists and shaking on either side of Stiles’ hips. Stiles cannot keep up with werewolf refractory times—werewolf stamina doesn’t bleed through any more than healing does, sadly—but he’s long since turned that to his advantage. Soft dick means clear head when he reaches between Jackson’s legs, plays with his balls, flicks a thumbnail over the baby-smooth flesh.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Jackson moans, sinking further against Stiles. His head goes back, chin hooking over Stiles’ shoulder. His throat presses into Stiles’ chest so Stiles can feel every convulsive swallow. “Fuck, fuck, why are you such a bastard, okay, Derek just keeps fucking with the Porsche.”

“He what?” Stiles stops moving his hand. He shakes Jackson before the shudder really takes hold of the other man, then clamps his fingers tight around the base of Jackson’s dick. “What did he do?”

“He just—” Jackson nuzzles frantically at Stiles’ neck, breathing hot and wet “—he shows up and he changes the fucking engine! He fucks with it, okay, I don’t even think it’s street legal now, fuck, Stiles, _please_.”

Stiles blinks. Derek has his own car, a Camaro that Laura snickers at every time she sees it, which is customized to the point that Scott thinks they shouldn’t let Derek watch the new _Fast and Furious_ movie. And he seems very happy with it. He looks really good in greasy tanks and his ability to rewire a car battery has shortened several interrogations.

He also seems pretty monogamous about it. Sure, he rolls his eyes every time the Jeep breaks down, but he doesn’t touch it unless Stiles asks, and Peter has to blackmail him with embarrassing baby stories to get him to go anywhere near Peter’s car. And the less said about what Derek did with Erica’s car and a forklift, the better.

“Are you two still having that weird priority negotiation?” Stiles asks.

Jackson hitches weakly against him, mouthing at Stiles’ jaw, and Stiles remembers. He nudges Jackson’s head over with his chin, then sucks a hickey just under the collar while jerking him off. Jackson comes, hips stuttering, and then squirms down so he can lap clean Stiles’ hand and belly. He grips Stiles’ knee a little hard, but his breathing is so ragged that Stiles rides it out till Jackson steadies some.

“No,” Jackson mumbles, settling basically where he’d been before they started talking. “I mean, I don’t think so, but it’s Derek. I don’t even believe he ever cared that I was here first, I think he was just trying to figure out whether you gave a damn about him jumping me.”

“You’re kind of cute when you bug out,” Stiles says. He snorts at Jackson’s wounded huff, but slides his fingers into Jackson’s hair. They’re still wet with Jackson’s spit, leaving matted trails over his head, but Jackson sighs and turns into it. “And he makes great faces when he forgets about the lacrosse gear and gets whacked when you turn around.”

“You’re such an asshole.” But Jackson kisses Stiles just above the bellybutton, soft and lingering. He drops another one lower down, but Stiles still isn’t ready to go again, so he just grunts and pillows his head on Stiles’ thigh. “It’s probably nothing. He’s just fucking with me.”

“Still. Let me know next time.” Stiles lifts an eyebrow when Jackson looks at him. “He fucks with you, he fucks with me, Whittemore. Definition of pack leader.”

Jackson mumbles something about taking care of himself, but his neck is stretching out under Stiles’ hand. He cuddles up to Stiles’ leg and doesn’t make a peep of protest when Stiles turns the movie off.


	3. Chris Argent

“Believe me, this is the last subject I want to be talking to you about,” Chris says. He squints through the scope, twiddles with its pins, and then takes the rifle off his shoulder and sets it on the stand beside him.

“But.” Stiles shifts, then shifts again. They’re staking out the roof across the street from the target, and even with a flannel blanket under him, his vertebrae and the concrete are not agreeing with each other. He rolls over onto his stomach, but that feels even worse, so he flops back and grits his teeth.

Chris eyes him. Well, it’s not like Stiles wants to be on stake-out either. Doesn’t suit his temperament and all, what with the need to hold completely still and shut up for hours on end. If they’d gone with his original idea and broken into the building and just marked up the ballroom floor with blood sigils, he could’ve handled the whole thing from the hotel, but no, nobody wanted to get him his damn transfusions.

“But he’s writing to advice columns on my behalf, and then forwarding me the responses,” Chris says. He strips off his gloves and squats back so he can check over his bullets. “He also downloaded a dating app to my phone and set up a profile for me. As a teenage girl. So I can check whether Scott’s using it to cheat on my daughter.”

Cloudy evening. Stiles checks his phone and finds it’s only ten minutes closer to the big party, chances of precipitation are fifteen percent over the next two hours, and he actually hasn’t taken that app off his phone either. They’d used it to get intel on a particularly stubborn, albeit tech-savvy, vamp coven last month. “At least it wasn’t so _you_ could start dating?”

Chris is quiet and keeps his head down, but Stiles can see his arms and they’re moving pretty sharply. By all accounts Chris really had loved his wife, and Allison had talked them into relocating her bones to a nearby cemetery. Which is about all Stiles cares to do: he and Chris have a decent working relationship, but he’s not going to go easy on the man’s goddamn feelings when he still has nightmares over his stay under Gerard Argent.

But yeah, true, it’s an objectively terrible idea to let Peter Cyrano anything, let alone the Scott and Allison thing. Never mind Chris’s feelings, Stiles doesn’t want to talk Scott through any kind of meet-the-parents problem. Nice thing about Deucalion, not an issue at all.

“Did you talk to Peter about it?” Stiles finally says.

“Can I?” Chris says.

Stiles taps his fingers against his stomach. “Fuck you.”

“I’m just—” Chris exhales loudly. He sounds tired. Good. “Stiles. I’m trying to be respectful.”

“Maybe you could try to just fucking communicate, first,” Stiles mutters. “Jesus. You know, your dad—”

“I’m sorry about my father,” Chris snaps. He keeps with the loud breathing, then abruptly cuts off. When Stiles looks over, he’s just rumpling his hand over his face. 

And leaking a bunch of emotions, which Stiles can block and block and block but he’ll still feel the pressure if not the actual feeling. Fuck this, Stiles thinks for the umpteenth time. He never wanted a familiar. Never needed it before, didn’t really need it now, especially if people would just get on board with his cash-for-blood Darknet idea. He should’ve just let the backlash kill Chris.

“I am,” Chris says, a little more softly. “I’m sorry about him, and about anyone else in my family that hurt you, including me. I’m sorry that you ended up with me, and I’m sorry I haven’t said it sooner.”

Stiles turns his head away. He wishes he could get up, but he has to stay so he can pick out the stupid fucking target with his awesome blood mage senses and Chris can shoot them. Fuck his life, and fuck Chris, for making him believe in the guy’s guilt. “What were you waiting for?”

“Well, honestly? I thought you’d have had me killed off by now. It’s what I’d do.” Chris sounds pretty matter-of-fact about it. Fuck him for having these kinds of little moments too, when Stiles sort of likes him. “Look, if you’re not, just tell me what the rules are, and I’ll play by them.”

“Rules,” Stiles repeats. He massages the back of his neck, then the back of his head. Next time he’s bringing one of those airplane pillows. “Okay. Okay, well, don’t fuck with anything I love, let me know immediately if someone’s after you, and believe that Scott is the nicest guy you’ll ever meet who is also a werewolf who was sold into supernatural slavery as a child. And Jesus Christ, if Peter is fucking with you, just tell him to stop. And get Danny to up the security on your phone.”

“Right,” Chris says slowly.

Stiles sighs. “I’m his alpha and your mage, and not anybody’s damn babysitter. You’re both how much older than me? If you’re going to have a blood vendetta, could you at least use the grown-up tactics?”

Chris is eyeing him again. The man turns like he’s just going to keep his mouth shut, like usual, but then he stops and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Stiles,” he says even more slowly, every word a grudge. “I don’t think Peter’s interested in killing me now, since I can help keep you alive. And yes, I know you don’t _need_ a familiar for that, but I make it easier on you. Or I would, if you’d let me.”

“Aaaaand you want me to use you?” Stiles says. “Excuse me, this is news, I didn’t realize voluntary indentured servitude had been incorporated into the Argent Code.”

Chris rolls his eyes. “Stiles, if I really wanted to, I’d kill myself, or let Allison kill me. And you wouldn’t stop it.” He pauses—he buried his wedding ring with Victoria, but fidgets like he’s still wearing it—then turns a sober face on Stiles. “The Code was about helping, in the beginning, and it’s been a long time since I’ve done that. I’d like to start again.”

He turns back to his rifle, checking over whatever. There’s a bit of wind now, and Stiles watches Chris turn his face this way and that, figuring out how it’s coming, and then make some adjustments to the rifle stand. In a pinch Stiles can use a range weapon, but it’s not his preferred type (closer he is, easier to read the blood) and so it’s different, seeing this kind of work. Probably not going to get him into sharpshooting, but you never know what you need to know.

“I know what I’m asking for,” Chris adds. He gets back down on his belly and pulls his gloves on. “And if it’s your…what happened to you before, I’ll respect that. But believe me, it’d make everyone feel a lot better if you stopped losing so much blood. It’s not a renewable resource.”

“It kind of is.”

“It’s really not,” Chris says. For a guy his age, he’s still pretty flexible, melting into the blanket so he’s lower than Stiles. The blanket muffles his voice a little, but it’s still audible. “God knows Peter would stop trying to take care of my distractions for me.”

“What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?” Stiles says after a second.

Chris glances at him. “You should talk to him. And again, _last_ subject I want to bring up. But I am. Because, annoying as it is, the playground bullshit is better than the blood vendetta, but we keep going like this and I think we’re heading that way.”

“I hate you all, a lot.” Stiles stares at the sky. “Goddamn it, are we even close to this party starting?”

“Fifty minutes,” Chris tells him. “Try and keep it down? People have started showing up.”

Stiles puts his hand over his face.


	4. Scott McCall

“Bro, we need to talk,” Stiles says. “Peter and Derek are being weird.”

“I _know_ ,” Scott says, and Stiles immediately writes off his discussion and resigns himself to listening buddy. To his credit, Scott looks apologetic about laying it on Stiles. And then he puts down his sandwich and stares wide-eyed across the table, and lays it on. “Stiles, Derek cornered me yesterday and wanted to know how I was doing with Allison, and if she and Deucalion were getting along.”

Stiles sits down. He takes his time about it, deliberately making sure he knows where the chair is at and where his limbs are in relation to it, because the last thing he needs is slapstick pratfalls. “What the hell.”

“I know! He wanted to know if we were having sex yet! Me and Allison!” Scott is blushing madly, and if he hadn’t put down the sandwich, it would have been plastered all over the room because he’s flailing like Stiles doesn’t even flail. “And I asked why did he care, and he said it’s different with regular humans and had I ever slept with somebody who wasn’t a were, and then he wouldn’t tell me what the hell he meant! And—and—it’s not, right? Not really. I mean, Lydia and Jackson—”

“Well, she’s a banshee, not a norm, but you and Allison have been banging for going on three weeks now,” Stiles says. “You notice anything weird?”

Scott blinks hard and rapidly, and then he takes two deep, centering breaths. He puts his hands down. “Um. No, not really. Well, she had wolfsbane residue under her nails once when we were making out and I started—but that was an accident and she was more upset than me. And I guess if you count remembering to not pop claws, but I don’t really do that much anyway, me and Deuc aren’t nearly as kinky as—okay. So no. So why is Derek asking?”

“No idea. Wait, you haven’t gone through a full moon with her, maybe that’s it. Except okay, I’m magic but I have normal human anatomy and I haven’t noticed anything but the mood changes.” Stiles puts his head in his hands and wonders if there’s a return policy on werewolves. Okay, not really. But God, seriously, is this what being an alpha is about? “What about Peter?”

“He’s…actually been sort of okay, I guess,” Scott says. He pokes absently at his sandwich. “Aside from that time he told me I was the worst alpha he’d ever seen and deserved to see everybody I loved die because I was letting you go meet Allison all by yourself.”

Stiles cocks his head. “He what? Is that what happened?”

“No, what happened was he said that, and I said I hadn’t _let_ you, you’d taken Erica and Jackson and booked it and I hate it when you do that, but I trust _you_.” Scott’s finger goes into the sandwich. He makes a face, pulls it out, and wipes it off on a napkin. “And he got this weird look, like he didn’t know who to hit, and then Derek said they were just worried, and _Lydia_ wanted to know why they were worried when they’d just met you, and Peter said if the Argents got any more good things the world might as well end now, because it wasn’t worth it.”

“He’s dramatic,” Stiles says after a second.

Scott nods. “But he…really did seem upset. Him and Derek. And well, I trusted you, all right, but I didn’t want a repeat of what happened with Blake. If you guys wore yourself out, I figured they could carry you out of there.”

“But they’d just met me, like Lydia said. Always listen to Lydia,” Stiles says.

“I know, but…it’s a wolf thing.” Scott grimaces even as he’s saying it. He knows how much Stiles hates that hand-wave; it’s true that there are some things Stiles will never have firsthand knowledge of, but he’s learned himself up on everything else and he did that before Scott. Since he _taught_ Scott and all. “I mean…she couldn’t see it, but I could. They were already seeing you as alpha. It was the whole way they were…you know.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d noticed.” Stiles shifts his head to lean on one arm. He uses his other arm to pull Scott’s sandwich over and take it apart so he can pick out the salami layer, his favorite.

Scott, being Scott, looks exasperated and fond, but doesn’t call him on it, or on any of the zillion other things. He just reaches down into the cooler at his feet and pulls out a bottle of soda. Pops off the top with his claw and takes a swig.

“Is this a wolf thing?” Stiles said. “Some really snobby born-wolf thing they don’t write down or talk to bittens about?”

“I asked Deuc after Derek…” Scott looks a little nauseated at the memory “…he says they’re courting.”

Stiles nearly chokes on the salami. He takes the soda from Scott, chugs it till his throat is working normally again, and then passes it back. “They’re not bringing me dead things or showing off their fighting skills or trying to merge our bodies. Also, we’re _already_ fucking. This is not courting behavior, Scott.”

“Well, Deuc seemed a little confused by it too? But that’s his best guess,” Scott says. “I don’t know who else to ask.”


	5. Laura Hale

“They’re totally courting,” Laura says. Monterey and Lydia were good to her, loosening her posture and giving her a healthy tan. She tosses another bikini in the laundry and then gets down on her knees to dig out a packet for Stiles, which turns out to be rare dried seaweed.

Stiles refuses to be bribed. “This isn’t courting behavior.”

Laura sits back on her heels. She looks at him, then up at the ceiling, and then back at her bag. “We’re _were_ wolves, Stiles, not just animals. Yeah, we’ve got instincts and traditions, but Derek and Peter are smart enough and give enough of a damn to actually think about whether those are even appropriate. And you’re not exactly an easy one.”

“Meaning?” Stiles sighs.

“You rebuilt our house as your den, and it’s amazing. You have an established pack, one that can cover its territory just fine, and you can provide for it all by yourself, without breaking a sweat. You took out the Argents—granted, by letting Gerard almost disembowel you, but that just makes it difficult on multiple levels,” Laura rattles off. She pauses to sort some bras out. “You can take out our enemies, and you’d rather do it by letting them hurt you than letting them hurt anyone else. That means a lot, especially for us. I’m not done yet, so please don’t run off and kill somebody.”

“I don’t—do that—all the time,” Stiles says. He stuffs the seaweed under his arm. “Goddamn it. And you.”

“Thanks,” Laura says cheerfully. Then she crawls over and roots around till she finds those netted bags Lydia uses for her bras. She stuffs them in, zips up the bags and then starts filling up the washing machine. “So really, they’re supposed to bring you the heart of a sworn rival? That’d be practically insulting you.”

“So what are they doing, exactly?” Stiles says.

Laura measures out detergent, dumps it in, and then shuts the top of the machine. She punches buttons and turns knobs, and then she turns and looks Stiles in the eye.

“They’re trying to help your pack members,” she says. Then she frowns. “Oh, which is why—ugh, I _knew_ Peter wasn’t just shopping. Even if she loved the shoes.”

“Help my pack members.” Stiles stares at her. “Jacking up Jackson’s car with custom mods is helping my pack members.”

“If we need a quick getaway, it’s usually his or Derek’s car,” Laura says.

“Giving Chris advice on Allison dating Scott,” Stiles says.

“He’s pack.” Laura’s mouth twists a little, but she says it steadily enough. “And he needs to figure out that Allison can beat the shit out of Scott if she needs to.”

“Giving _Scott_ advice on dating Allison. Specifically, sex tips,” Stiles says.

Laura sighs. “Old girlfriend of Derek’s, sorry, he has issues.”

“Telling my dad how to kill them permanently,” Stiles says.

“Because he’s your blood relative, and if we somehow end up responsible for your death, someone needs to come after us. No, I remember about Scott, but he has a pack of his own, he won’t necessarily be free to do it.” Laura looks down. Her vacation glow dims. “That’s—instinct, I guess. Keep it in the family. However bad it is, keep it in the blood.”

She stands with her hands flat on the top of the washing machine. Lydia and her hanging out has been good to her, that and Stiles figures she and Peter finally hashed out the whole tried-to-kill-you thing somewhere along the line. She’s been more relaxed, and for real, not just fronting to keep up. And then she says something like that, and Stiles can see her and the other Hales all locked up together, wild and snarling and ripping each other to shreds.

Why she doesn’t want to be alpha anymore, he guesses. He’s not going to protest. He took a while to come round, but now that he has, he has to admit the suit fits. “And the fact that we’ve been screwing around for months?”

Laura wrinkles her nose. “Are we being stupid now, or is this denial? Either way, like I said. _Courting_. Not screwing around. Now go talk to them already, would you? I don’t want to spend my resurrected life worrying about their fragile egos.”

“Fragile,” Stiles says. But he thanks her anyway, and leaves her to her laundry.


	6. + 1 Sex Ritual

“This is more boring than I thought it’d be,” Derek says, and reaches up to his face.

“Don’t touch!” Stiles snaps. He finishes his brushstroke and then sits back on his feet and glares at Derek. “Seriously, I should have left you tied up.”

Derek doesn’t look apologetic or anything, but he lowers his hands. Technically, he’s still tied up: white and red cords web his forearms together from wrist to elbow, then separate to coil up each arm and across his shoulderblades. More rope binds each thigh to calf, so he can move his legs independently but can’t straighten them, and a thinner rope of silk winds tightly around his cock, keeping it limp. It’s still not enough to keep him from being a pain in the ass.

“Look how good Peter is being,” Stiles adds for good measure.

Peter makes a muffled but distinctly smarmy noise. Obviously, Stiles gagged him first. He’s tied up like Derek, except his wrists are still knotted to the hook hanging from the ceiling, so Stiles has a semi-cooperative canvas for the symbols he’s painting. His head turns so he catches Stiles’ eye, and as a result the muscles in his back ripple and push against the rope, and it’s all very fucking good to look at but it also sends a trickle of sweat off one shoulder.

Stiles curses and snatches up his rag, and blots out the sweat before it smears anything. Then he sits back again and wipes the back of his hand across his forehead. They’re in the basement and the air-conditioning is fine, but there are a lot of symbols. Incredibly intricate symbols, needing to go on in a very specific order, down to the brushstrokes. It took two hours to just draw the body map, which took three days before that to work out.

So Derek has a point. Sex rituals are, in fact, a gigantic pain.

“Remember, you volunteered for this,” Stiles mutters. He ducks down next to Peter to consult the map, reloading his brush at the same time, and then straightens up. 

The next one has to go around the twentieth vertebrae. Stiles counts them off by tapping each with the pointy end of the brush. He feels more than hears Peter’s breath slow, go thick and deep, and right as Peter moans he reaches under Peter’s ass and grabs his balls, giving them a sharp tug.

“Would you just fucking wait.” At least this symbol is quick, just three strokes. But the paint is thick and oily (and smells a little stale by itself, but goes musky and strangely sweet on sweaty skin), and it blobs a little. Stiles scrapes at the excess with a fingernail. Grinds his teeth when Peter arches, drags his weight from the hook so rope creaks and sways. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

“Want me to suck you off again?” Derek says. He sounds a little breathless, though when Stiles glares at him, he’s still looking sulky and bored. His brows rise. “You smell—”

Yeah, sure. Derek smells it. Like they’re not all naked and Stiles hasn’t had an erection trying to bump his chin for the past half-hour. “If I have to start over, so help me.”

“Your hand’s getting shaky,” Derek observes. He shifts his knees, widening his stance, and then, just as Stiles is getting ready to yell at him, drops forward onto his forearms. He cocks his head, letting Stiles see that yeah, he’s got such good control he hasn’t ruined a single symbol, and then tilts it further, showing off his bite scar. “If I suck and you don’t move, it won’t touch my cheeks.”

Stiles slaps Peter on the thigh. “You keep turning around and I’ll do Derek where you _can’t_ see, you voyeur creep.”

Peter shudders and lets his head fall forward into his hanging forearms. He moans again, more ragged, and definitely does not give a shit about any threats Stiles can make right now. Stiles looks at him, then at the body map. Three more on the back, then the face. And then drying time. And _then_ five more steps before penetrative sex.

Next time he’s charging triple, Stiles thinks, putting his brush aside and sinking down. He rests his forehead against the floor. It’s nice and cool, and doesn’t move.

“Stiles?”

He puts out his hand, pauses, and then turns his head. Derek’s shuffled to within a few inches and then frozen, since Stiles’ fingertips are just about to rake through a twenty-stroke character. Stiles exhales, irritated, looks at Derek’s dark, concerned eyes anyway, and then carefully moves his hand so it’s in Derek’s hair instead. He tightens his grip and Derek’s eyes half-close.

“So, this whole courting thing,” he says, and Derek’s eyes open back up. “Yeah. Talked to Laura. And Scott. And Peter, I swear, if I ever have Chris going all Dad on me again—”

At that point Peter makes a weird, garbled noise, starting in a cottony snarl and ending in a hacked cough. He spits the gag well clear of his knees, works his jaw once, and then does not try to twist around. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think he’d react like…really?”

Derek looks like Stiles’ face feels, and Stiles can’t help but scrunch his hand reassuringly in the man’s hair. For someone who’s as much asshole as idiot, Derek is annoyingly endearing. “Yeah. It was. Not something I want to repeat,” Stiles says. He pets Derek a little longer, then pulls his hand back. “I get my father, but you’re pack now, so why keep going?”

“I said I’d make a good beta,” Derek says after a long few seconds. He hesitates, his eyes flicking past Stiles. Then he pushes himself up as much as his arm bindings will allow, looking straight and steadily at Stiles. “We weren’t…great in the pack we were born into. You should see that we’re better than that.”

Stiles levers himself up from the floor. He must make some sort of annoyed gesture because Derek, about to crawl after him, jerks to a stop. So Stiles stops, and then they stare at each other, and then Stiles rolls his eyes and just turns enough so that he can slide his fingers into Peter’s hair. Peter’s still facing forward but his shoulders and back slacken immediately.

“You fucked each other up,” Stiles says. He shrugs. “You’re still in. And if you’re going to make me talk about my issues, let me just point out that you knew I was freaking out when it happened, so it’s not like you got surprised either. Still not seeing what you’re trying to prove here.”

“We’re not trying to prove anything, Stiles,” Peter says. He presses back into Stiles’ hand, then sags in the ropes as Stiles takes it away. “What we’re trying to do, is find our place. We weren’t born into this pack. We don’t know.”

Derek nods sharply. He’s doing that thing, that look where it’s like every single flutter and twitch Stiles makes is a whole separate book that needs to be decoded. And yeah, so werewolves, body language, but it’s not that intense. And Peter might not be looking their way but Stiles doesn’t doubt he’s straining his other senses.

How exhausting, Stiles thinks, and then he blinks and looks at both of them again.

“Yeah, okay.” Stiles wipes at his forehead again. He checks his map, sighs, and picks up his brush. “But you’re already in. And also, we can talk? I mean, I know I…babble. But c’mon, Scott can work through it.”

Derek rolls his eyes, while Peter snorts, but the tension in the room has definitely dropped.

“Honestly, I don’t know either. I make most of this shit up as I go, I hope you realize, and anyway I don’t think there’s such thing as an optimal psycho staffing number for killing shit in the dark,” Stiles mutters. He rubs at Peter’s back with the heel of his hand to clear off the sweat, then puts brush to skin. Then he takes it away. “And fuck it, you know what? I will take that blowjob, Derek. Take five, Peter.”

Peter’s…not really on board with that, but Stiles already has Derek’s head up by the hair and Derek’s mouth on his cock. Whatever. Nobody’s going anywhere soon.


End file.
